Hurriyet Daily News
US cost of war ‘at least 225,000 lives'
The wars will cost Americans between $3.2 trillion and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans.
The cost of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan are estimated at 225,000 lives and up to $4 trillion in U.S. spending, according to a study released on Wednesday.
The report by scholars with the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies called ‘Costs of War’ has released new figures for a range of human and economic costs associated with the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks.
The wars will cost Americans between $3.2 trillion and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans, the report said. If the wars continue, they are on track to require at least another $450 billion in Pentagon spending by 2020.
In the 10 years since U.S. troops went into Afghanistan to root out the al Qaeda leaders behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, spending on the conflicts totaled $2.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion.
Those numbers will continue to soar when considering often overlooked costs such as long-term obligations to wounded veterans and projected war spending from 2012 through 2020. The estimates do not include at least $1 trillion more in interest payments coming due and many billions more in expenses that cannot be counted, according to the study.
In human terms, 224,000 to 258,000 people have died directly from warfare, including 125,000 civilians in Iraq. Many more have died indirectly, from the loss of clean drinking water, healthcare and nutrition. An additional 365,000 have been wounded and 7.8 million people have been displaced.
“Costs of War” brought together more than 20 academics to uncover the expense of war in lives and dollars, a daunting task given the inconsistent recording of lives lost and what the report called opaque and sloppy accounting by the U.S. Congress and the Pentagon, Reuters news agency reported.
The report underlines the extent to which war will continue to stretch the U.S. federal budget, which is already on an unsustainable course due to an aging American population and skyrocketing healthcare costs. It also raises the question of what the United States gained from its multitrillion-dollar investment.
“I hope that when we look back, whenever this ends, something very good has come out of it,” Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, told Reuters in Washington.
In one sense, the report measures the cost of the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Al-Qaeda plotters spent an estimated $400,000 to $500,000 on the plane attacks that killed 2,995 people and caused $50 billion to $100 billion in economic damages. For every person killed on Sept. 11, another 73 have been killed since. The civilian death toll in Iraq - 125,000 - and the number of Saddam’s forces killed in the invasion - 10,000 - are loose estimates.
The cost of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan are estimated at 225,000 lives and up to $4 trillion in U.S. spending, according to a study released on Wednesday.
The report by scholars with the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies called “Costs of War” has released new figures for a range of human and economic costs associated with the U.S. military response to the 9/11 attacks.
The wars will cost Americans between $3.2 trillion and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans, the report said. If the wars continue, they are on track to require at least another $450 billion in Pentagon spending by 2020.
In the 10 years since U.S. troops went into Afghanistan to root out the al Qaeda leaders behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, spending on the conflicts totaled $2.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion.
Those numbers will continue to soar when considering often overlooked costs such as long-term obligations to wounded veterans and projected war spending from 2012 through 2020. The estimates do not include at least $1 trillion more in interest payments coming due and many billions more in expenses that cannot be counted, according to the study.
In human terms, 224,000 to 258,000 people have died directly from warfare, including 125,000 civilians in Iraq. Many more have died indirectly, from the loss of clean drinking water, healthcare and nutrition. An additional 365,000 have been wounded and 7.8 million people have been displaced.
“Costs of War” brought together more than 20 academics to uncover the expense of war in lives and dollars, a daunting task given the inconsistent recording of lives lost and what the report called opaque and sloppy accounting by the U.S. Congress and the Pentagon, Reuters news agency reported.
The report underlines the extent to which war will continue to stretch the U.S. federal budget, which is already on an unsustainable course due to an aging American population and skyrocketing healthcare costs. It also raises the question of what the United States gained from its multitrillion-dollar investment.
“I hope that when we look back, whenever this ends, something very good has come out of it,” Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, told Reuters in Washington.
In one sense, the report measures the cost of 9/11, the American shorthand for the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Nineteen hijackers plus other al-Qaeda plotters spent an estimated $400,000 to $500,000 on the plane attacks that killed 2,995 people and caused $50 billion to $100 billion in economic damages.
What followed were three wars in which $50 billion amounts to a rounding error. For every person killed on Sept. 11, another 73 have been killed since.
The civilian death toll in Iraq - 125,000 - and the number of Saddam’s security forces killed in the invasion - 10,000 - are loose estimates. The U.S. military does not publish a thorough accounting.
In Afghanistan, the civilian death count ranges from 11,700 to 13,900. For Pakistan, where there is little access to the battlefield and the United States fights mostly through aerial drone attacks, the study found it impossible to distinguish between civilian and insurgent deaths.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=us-cost-of-war-8216at-least-225000-lives-2011-06-29
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